Lumia 610 rumored to have a 3.2" screen, ultra low cost

Seems almost silly posting supposed renders of a phone that will be announced in less than 24 hours here at Mobile World Congress, but lets get on with it.

The latest stems around the Lumia 610, a low-end phone for emerging markets e.g. India which is expected to help push Nokia (and Windows Phone) deep into areas where Apple and even Android have trouble due to rising costs. The 610, according to BGR will have:

3.2" screen

3MP camera

Cost Rs 11,000 (Euro 175)

256MB of RAM

Going further that image above is reportedly what it looks like. To which we all say "sure, why not?". Nokia is certainly capable of making this phone and "610" screams budget phone as the higher the numbers go, the more high end they are and vice versa for Nokia. All we can say is lets wait till tomorrow and we'll probably even see one in real life instead of shady Twitter accounts, m'kay?

First thing I thought was, bleh looks like a HTC.
But since it is a really low end phone we can cut them some slack.
Also.. the problem with HTC is that all their phones look like this, even the high end.

All these rumour renders of forthcoming Nokia phones always appears to have extremely curved edges. Has Nokia ever released a phone like this before? Plus the colour scheme doesn't match the Lumia either. Fake!!!

Whether it's fake or not, Nokia phones have always been pretty well built, certainly the £100+ ones anyway. I did have a HTC Mozart until an accident ruined the screen. I now use a Nokia C5, a fine phone for battery life. However, I'd be very interested in this phone, reasonably priced and a smaller screen which would be more comfortable in my hands when speaking on the phone. I even found the Mozart a bit too big for my hands to talk with for prolonged periods. If the core Windows Phone stuff runs like the 512MB devices (i.e. smoooth!) and I could get 2 days battery out of this, I'd seriously consider purchasing this.

If this is the real render of the phone, we have a winner here. Brand Nokia is huge in India and it's mostly the price factor (and to some extent, durablity) that plays a role. Almost everyone in India owns a cell phone, the most common ringtone is Nokia's ringtone...So, if Nokia can target that population with such phones. then we have a WP mass adoption.....

The size doesn't matter all the time.... ;) The WP has large tiles unlike the grid of icons on other mobile ecosystems; so easy to navigate. Well, with regards to typing, people are used to typing on an iPhone which is just 0.3 inches larger. I guess, it should be okay...

I like the look, yeah Nokia is the number 1 brand in India and there are a lot of talented programers there. If this catches on Nokia could carve a nice big chunk of the market in a democratic nation of 1 billion+

My take? When I first saw the 710 it looked cheap, and did not look like a slick and flush device. But, when I finally got one in my hands it was a different story. The 710 is very solid hardware, and very nice looking. My point is that these pictures rarely do the phones justice, especially with quality devices.

I'm talking about off contract phones too. Here in Spain you can even get a Radar (2nd gen) for 220€, off contract. Titan was ~350€ a week ago, but now it's out of stock.
If you can find a LG Optimus 7 (mostly out of stock too), they were selling for 160-180€ a month ago, again, off contract.

The Windows Phone hardware spec has always been minimum 256MB so its not like Microsoft have lowered the spec recently for emerging markets. If developers have targeted their apps to works on the minimum required specs these phones should not have any trouble running apps available in the marketplace.
Hardware Minimums, FYI: Windows Phone 7 Series Minimum System Requirements

Capacitive Touch: 4 or more contact points

Sensors: A-GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity

Camera: 5 megapixels or more, Camera with a flash and dedicated camera button